Marder-ography – Tales of the Beanworld (self-published) #4 [1983]

Continuing Shield Albright’s much appreciated comparison of the self-published Beanworld issues with the eventually published final version a few years later. Just a few minor changes in the conclusion of “The Legend of Pop! Pop! Pop!”.

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TOTB self-pub #4/TOTB #1

1/25: Same, except that the Home Sweet Home painting in the regular edition replaces the self-pub logo and the family portrait was moved up a bit.

2-4/26-28: Same

5/29: Same, except the smudged remains of the villain are slightly smudgier

6-7/30-31: Same

8/32: The Chowdown pool and occupants are the same, but the background is different. The pile of chow is just to the right of the pool. The weapon is missing from the background. The grass horizon line is a line with vertical marks for grass instead of a jagged line. The sky has clouds on the horizon and a larger sun, both shaded with pencil (which, frankly, looks rather sloppy). While Mr.Spook seems to be the same picture, it seems his fork was redrawn.

Marder-ography – Phantom Force #2 [1994]

Jack Kirby’s influence on Marder’s work is profound in both obvious and subtle ways, and as posted before Marder has taken a few opportunities to pay some small measure of tribute. Another example is in this 1994 comic book published by Image Comics, which wound up coming out shortly after Kirby passed away early that year, where various inkers worked over Kirby’s pencils on one of his later creations. Unfortunately, Marder wasn’t one of the inkers (just imagine how that would have looked), but he does provide a two-page text essay in the back of the book, titled “A Kirby Tale”.

If you are a comic book fan of a certain age, there was this fateful day in the early ’60s, when you were quite young, (more often than not during some childhood malady) when you first gazed upon a wondrous thing called a Marvel Comic book.

Within its four color covers was a ticket to ride the universe. At the wheel was comic books’ greatesr trailblazer, pathfinder and navigator – Jack “King” Kirby. The ideas and concepts contained in a Kirby comic immediately transported the reader into a delicious realm of possibilities. Some possibilities were majestic, some tragic, some frightening, some funny – all were spellbinding. First with the Fantastic Four and later Thor, the young untapped-cartoonist-in-me pondered the cosmic implications contained in Kirby’s creations.

I fell into a place with the gravitational pull of a black hole called The Influence of Jack Kirby’s Super Hero Work.

Marder continues to write about his discovery of the culture of the Native American Hopi tribe of the American south-west, and in particular how their ceremonial Kachinas, and how his fascination with them was fuelled by their resemblance to the designs that populated Kirby’s work, and the connections he found between Hopi mythology and Kirby’s work, and strongly informed his own development of Beanworld.

Finally, the year before Beanworld was published, he asked Kirby about the connections at a convention, only to find out that Kirby wasn’t familiar with those Hopi myths, and any similarities were coincidence, but remain very real to him.

Marder-ography – Tales of the Beanworld (self-published) #3 [1983]

Continuing Shield Albright’s much appreciated comparison of the self-published Beanworld issues with the eventually published final version a few years later. Very few changes in this particular issue, presenting the middle of the first story.

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TOTB self-pub #3/TOTB #1

1/17: Main panel redrawn as first panel second tier. Bottom tier redrawn as a panel and new dialog (see cover scan)

2-8/18-24: Appear to be the same

Marder-ography – Lady Arcane #2 [1992]

Lady Arcane #2 [1992]
Art by Larry Marder

This is a rather unusual Beanworld cameo. LADY ARCANE was a spin-off of the Hero Graphics books FLARE and CHAMPIONS, featuring Donnah Hannah, a magical super-hero who is the grand-daughter of Doctor Arcane. In the lead story this issue, “Gifts” (by Dennis Mallonee, Duval Stowers and Craig Stormon), Lady Arcane visits some other-dimensional friends of her grand-father as part of her training, and receives various magical objects or knowledge from them. The one we’re concerned about here is her brief visit with Professor Garbanzo of the Beanworld, where she gets a Twink and a Mystery Pod. On the next page she refers to them as “goofy knick-knacks” and her grand-father informs her:

Those “knick-knacks”, as you describe them, embody the essence of the technology of that world. That was a magnificent gift.

There’s also a brief plug for TALES OF THE BEANWORLD on that page. Proffy’s brief cameo was drawn by Larry Marder, and if I’m remembering what Mallonee mentioned years ago correctly there was some plan for the use of the objects in the future, although I’m not sure if that ever worked its way into a published story.

Product – Mr. Spook pin

Here’s another of the Planet Studio produced Beanworld pins, featuring Mr. Spook and his trusty fork. I really like the effect of the fork and Mr. Spook’s hands coming out of the frame, giving him a larger than life look, and adding a nice three-dimensional feel to the pin.

If you have any of the other Beanworld pins or other products, send me a jpg and a brief description and I’ll feature it here.

Marder-ography – Tales of the Beanworld (self-published) #2 [1983]

Continuing Shield Albright’s much appreciated comparison of the self-published Beanworld issues with the eventually published final version a few years later.

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TOTB self-pub #2/TOTB #1

Page 1/11: Cover has same text as top tier, completely different images. Note how fork design differs from pin-up on back of regular edition

Page 2/11: First panel done in silhouette, other 6 panels seem to be the same (with the exception of the jump panels being shortened to fit in a three tier page instead of a 2 tier page

Page 3-7/12-16: Appear to be the same

Page 8/17: Top two thirds of the page is Gran’Ma’Pa dropping the weapon. Same layout, but self-pub has split it into three panels. First panel is Spook & Proffy. Second panel includes two chow sol’jers with chow-pluk-rs saying “Is Gran’Ma’Pa dropping a sprout-butt?” “Huh?” Third panel is the weapon dropping down. Self-pub bottom tier was dropped from regular comic. Spook runs up “It stops without a single bounce and FLOATS!” Proffy runs up “Gran’Ma’Pa sends us a remarkable gift!” Pluk’r stands by and says “That thing is weird…” while two other sol’jers stand by and watch